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Lizzie Doten
1827–1913
A 19th-century American poet and celebrated Spiritualist speaker, she became especially known for poems she said were inspired by the spirits of writers including Edgar Allan Poe. Her work sits at the unusual crossroads of poetry, performance, and the era’s fascination with the unseen.
3 Audiobooks
Poems from the Inner Life
by Lizzie Doten
Poems of Progress
by Lizzie Doten
About the author
Born in 1827 and dying in 1913, Lizzie Doten was an American poet, lecturer, and prominent figure in the Spiritualist movement. She built a wide audience in the mid-1800s through public readings and trance lectures, presenting both her own writing and poems she said came through the spirits of famous dead poets.
She is most often remembered for Poems from the Inner Life, a collection closely tied to her reputation as a trance speaker and literary medium. That mix of performance, belief, and verse made her a distinctive cultural figure of her time, even among the many reformers, lecturers, and religious experimenters of the 19th century.
Today, she is of interest not only as a poet, but also as part of the larger story of American Spiritualism and women’s public voices in that period. Her career offers a glimpse into how literature, religion, and popular entertainment could overlap in unexpected ways.